america is looking to its congress for both. it is certainly looking to congress to be working. i said everywhere i go, people ask me and urge me with hope in their voices, "i hope you are working on that fiscal cliff," "i hope you are getting the situation that we are not going over the fiscal cliff." sadly, i have to tell them that we are not there, we are not here, we are not working. every democrat, every republican ought to be here. the speaker ought to call us back into session. it is not as if we do not have a lot of work to do. in fact, we have a lot of work to do. secretary geithner sent a letter to me and others yesterday, and it was reported in the paper today that america will reach its debt limit on december 31. that needs to be dealt with so that we can maintain the creditworthiness of this nation, so we can give confidence to this economy. in addition to that, there is much other business to do. over the past weeks, majority leader cantor said the house would do the work necessary to finish the items we needed to get done by the end of the year. i talked to mr. ca